


Fast Away the Old Year Passes

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Blackadder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by jimmy jazz</p><p>On that famous Christmas eve of 1914 when singing crossed no mans land, Captain Kevin Darling was wearing wet trousers and an elf hat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fast Away the Old Year Passes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for edna_blackadder

 

 

Fast Away the Old Year Passes

It is the evening of December twenty third, of the year nineteen fourteen, and Captain Kevin Darling - first of Croydon, now of somewhere in France - is preparing himself for an evening of relatively unparalleled bliss. It isn't a lorry load of paperclips, it isn't two lorry loads; it is sweet, blessed, all-encompassing, at-long-last silence, and it is definitely too good to last.

General Melchett's entrance sends the double doors back against the walls with a resounding bang and Darling snaps the tip of his pencil off in the soft paper of the blotter he was doing duplicate inventory on. After saluting (ignored), he resumes his seat and carefully sharpens the pencil, faintly aware of the shavings curling onto the desk, but more aware of General Melchett standing at the window with his feet braced apart and his hands clasped behind his back, uncharacteristically silent. Unlike the previous silence, this one is uncomfortable and heavy, as if they're waiting for something, waiting for Christmas maybe, waiting for the war to end. If he was so inclined, he would laugh. Waiting is the only thing they seem to do, apart from marching thousands of their men over the tops of the trenches at the German machine guns.

Kevin Darling dusts the loose shavings into the rubbish and resumes his inventory, meticulous and slightly irritated. If he can't enjoy silence, he may as well make use of it. As long as the General remains where he is, doing whatever he is or isn't doing, he may get the triplicate copies done before it's time to close up with the accounts for the day.

Of course, Edmund Blackadder throws open the doors and crushes that hope beneath his heel like an egg beneath an elephant. The second pencil tip gouges through six sheets of paper and snaps off, obliterating a neat line of numbers.

"Captain Blackadder," he acknowledges. The muscle beneath his eye twitches. This is a recent thing, induced, possibly, by the joint company of Blackadder and Melchett, or possibly by the enormous war raging on their doorstep and the lists of dead people he has to check, copy and tally up. Probably Blackadder and Melchett though.

"Ah, Darling," Blackadder replies, leaning insolently on his desk.  
"What do you want?"

The muscle twitches again. Bad enough he was saddled with the surname Darling; having it parroted back by that intolerable...the thought trails off, unable to find a suitable noun for the adjective. "General Melchett wants to speak with you," he says, dusting another handful of pencil sharpenings from the palm of his hand and resuming his accounts. "He will be with you shortly."

Blackadder peers around the room, raising one eyebrow at Darling. "The General is aware the drapes are closed, is he not?"

They glare at each other for no particular reason and Darling is formulating a response when the General in question turns around and booms "right-ho boys," causing the untimely death of yet another pencil lead.

"General," they stand and salute.

"At ease, at ease," he nods, advancing, and Blackadder has the audacity to continue leaning on his desk. "Now, Christmas is coming and there's nothing we want more than a midnight visit from Father Christmas and all his tiny elves with lots of mince pies for everyone," in the expectant silence, Blackadder cocks an eyebrow and Darling experiences a sinking feeling somewhere under his lungs. "Or to bully off home to England for roast potatoes and shiny red balls on the old fir tree."

"Surely not sir," Blackadder says, "I heard that the muddy, rat-infested trenches of France are the number one holiday destination this year. Every room on my floor is full and it is impossible to get a decent table without a reservation."

Having seen the figures, Darling silently agrees.

"You might think that, but desertion is at the highest at this time of year, too much of this namby-pamby, run home to mummy for tea and biscuits at the last minute, wet-pants mind changing. We don't like mind changing, do we Darling?"

"No sir," Darling agrees without thinking, wishing he could go home for tea and biscuits before he gets his head blown off doing something stupid, like fighting a war.

"All this mind changing is just what Jerry wants. He wants us weakened, vulnerable, ready to turn tail at any minute. Wet pants will lose us the war unless drastic measures are taken!"

"What do you propose we do, sir?" Blackadder looks, at worst, deathly bored. He usually looks bored, or cross, if the short term of their acquaintance is anything to go by, and he has thus far mostly ignored Darling. "Chain the men to their trench ladders?"

Melchett nods thoughtfully, fondling his moustache. "There's an idea," he says. "But for now, we will go ahead with Operation Dry Pants for Christmas. Darling, take this down!"

Another pencil lead meets its doom. He sighs.

Twenty minutes later, Kevin Darling places the gouged duplicate inside the ledger and closes the heavy leather book on the whole sorry mess. He falls asleep with the distinctly uncomforting thought that tomorrow will be worse.

When tomorrow turns into today, it is worse. Operation Dry Pants moves ahead with gusto and Kevin Darling finds himself as one of Lieutenant the Honourable George Colhurst St Barleigh's merry elves, standing guard at one end of the main trench row with a rifle, bayonet and pointy hat while the star of the show torments those who haven't already deserted with carols and bell-ringing. The snow hasn't the decency to stay frozen and is turning to slush beneath their feet while low to mid level shelling carries on above them, or maybe somewhere to their left. It's hard to tell once night descends, and it's hard to care once the wind picks up. If the worst thing about war is that you can die, the second worst is the boredom.

The brain-numbing, soul-crushing boredom.

It is obvious after the first fifteen minutes that no one is going to desert, especially not on a night like this, and no one should be lurking outside with rain running down their neck. He's a good soldier though, and even if he can't quite bring himself to stand at attention, he still hates the deserters. Even if they don't exist. He hates them for running from their duty, from their obligation. Rain soaks through his coat and the steady boom of artillery and howls of Captain Blackadder's menagerie singing carols makes the monotony even worse. When a figure approaches out of the gloom, he cocks his rifle and hopes for a disturbance.

He's never shot anyone before.

"Are you really going to shoot me, Darling?" Blackadder materializes, looking damp but otherwise pleased with himself. "I mean, really, I had you pegged for wet pants."

"There's nothing wet about my pants," he sniffs. His moustache is wet and dripping into his mouth, which is almost as annoying as the empty bag of cigarette papers in his left coat pocket or the elf hat drooping over one ear and flopping into his eyes.

"Except that they are, in fact, wet."

Kevin Darling scowls. There's something about the other man that makes him shrug and rankle, something that gets under his skin and wriggles until he makes a fool of himself. "What do you want, Captain Blackadder? I'm a very busy man."

"Ah, of course. Shot many deserters today, Darling?"

"That's none of your business. Go back to your own end or I'll report you to the General for insubordination and deserting your post." He puts the gun down on an empty ledge and dusts the snowflakes off his lapels.

Blackadder switches to expression number two and looks cross. "Why are you standing out in this weather waiting for imaginary deserters in wet pants? You're about as likely to stop someone from running off as they are to be running off." He throws Darling's elf hat over the top of the trench.

Darling is about to respond as viciously as he knows how when they hear singing. Silence and singing.

"It isn't..." he says.

Blackadder cocks an ear. "It is. Give me a leg up, Darling."

Unwilling, but still curious, he does. If he calls him Darling again like that, he can always drop him and hope he hits his head.

"What is it? Is the war over?" That seems too good to be true. The singing is not nearly melodic enough for the presence of angels and miracles needed for that to happen.

"It's Baldrick," Blackadder says. "And George. And what a grand day for natural selection. They're running towards the Germans singing carols."

"What?" Are they deserting? Are they mad? "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Shoot him! Shoot them both!" Blackadder yells across no man's land, and Darling jumps, slips, and has them both rolling around in the mud. Snow flutters down on them, Blackadder leaning against Darling's ribs, and they're silent for a moment because the noise of carols is getting louder. More voices are joining in, more voices from both sides of the field in France where poppies will one day grow but is now mostly mud, slush and barbed wire, and they're all singing `Silent Night'.

It would be a poetic moment if Kevin Darling was a poetic man, and if there wasn't mud creeping down his collar and his service revolver digging into his back. As it is, damp, uncomfortable and unpoetic, it's not bad, kind of pretty, something he'll remember for the rest of his life in the blur of the Great War, maybe even a defining moment. It would be more defining if he was wearing dry pants and Edmund Blackadder was not resting his elbows in soft parts of Darling's person.

"Ugh," Blackadder says, gearing up to make a fuss and ruining the moment. "Not content with soiling your own trousers, were you, Darling?"

When Darling doesn't respond, Blackadder is struck with the unusual affliction of having nothing to say, and leans back and continues reclining against his midsection. For infantry, the harmonizing isn't too bad and someone over in the German trench is playing an accordion. The calm is shattered for a second time by Baldrick slip-sliding past with a washboard and a wooden spoon.

"We're having a game of football!" He announces blithely as he helps Blackadder to his feet and clumsily tries to brush mud off his hat.  
"It's going to be us against the Germans!"

"If only all international disputes could be settled that way," Blackadder scowls. "Why do you have a washboard and spoon?"

"We're going to play Christmas carols. I've got the scraper, Private Cartwright has spoons, Hans has an accordion, the Lieutenant has a nose flute-"

"So it will be the biggest musical disaster since Edvard of Erfurt ate twenty seven cheese sausages with saukraut, stood on the courthouse steps and attempted to pass wind to the tune of the national anthem?"

"Oh no sir, we don't have any sausages."

Darling begins to understand why Blackadder looks cross most of the time.

Twenty minutes later Blackadder and Darling are back in Blackadder's blessedly empty section of trench listening to Bach and getting themselves outside of a bottle of cheap scotch and some of George's mince pies. Their pants are draped over chairs, drying, and the distant sounds of Christmas festivities occasionally echo in. Germany is definitely losing the football match.

Blackadder wraps the blanket tighter around himself. "I declare Operation Dry Pants a failure," he says, toasting its demise before bolting the contents of his glass.

Darling tries to put his empty glass down, misses the table, lurches and falls onto the floor. The blanket barely protects his modesty. "I declare," he begins, and then begins again. "I declare."

Again, Blackadder raises an eyebrow.

"I declare," it's getting ridiculous now.

"Yes?" the other man prompts.

"I do declare, nice legs Captain," Darling chortles.

"Thank you, Darling," Blackadder says, winks, leers and pours himself another scotch when Darling passes out on the floor, still wearing the elf hat.

Outside, someone is still singing `Silent Night' while another trills harmoniously on a nose flute. He turns up the Bach and prepares himself for an evening of relatively unparalleled bliss.

Tomorrow will probably be worse.

 


End file.
